1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imaging device, a location-information recording method, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, use of a geographical information system (GIS) for acquiring location information is widening along with the prevalence of portable global positioning system (GPS) receivers. The GIS is used for various purposes, for example, survey of fire disasters, real estate, road repairs, and the likes, and the demand is predicted to grow in the future.
The same system is also used in a digital camera, for example, taking photographs of a fire disaster site with the digital camera helps in writing a report related to the disaster at a later stage, by associating map data acquired from the GIS during the survey of the fire disaster site. Thus, there is a need to establish a relation between an image taken by the digital camera and the location information acquired from the GIS.
In response to such a need, a technology relating to the digital camera connected to a GPS receiver is published in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-357343. The location information received from the GPS receiver, is inputted into the digital camera, and is included in a header portion of the image in the digital camera. According to the technology, the location information of the image is recorded in the same image file, which streamlines management of the image file.
However, the GPS receiver is generally useful only outdoors, and when a photograph is taken indoors, it is impossible to store the location information on the image.